"I _do_ feel for you and will see what can be done," said Brentham; "but at the same time we must remember we are not on British territory, where they stand a good deal from the missionaries, but in _German_ Africa. The Germans have made a handsome acknowledgment of what Mr. Stott has done in the way of industrial teaching. Don’t go and spoil it all by being too ready to denounce these—these—irregularities! Things may right themselves in time. It would be such a dreadful blow to the Stotts if they were told to go, to leave the work of so many years...." Ann would promise nothing, however. She would speak as the Spirit bade her.... For the present her time was taken up with mission work among the Wambugwe, who were _quite_ the worst heathens she had met with. "Not only terribly depraved—they eat the corpses of their dead!!!—but the dirtiest Negroes I have ever seen, and _wholly_ lacking in spirituality." "Well then," said Roger, "_there_ you’ve got your work cut out, for several years. Meantime I will talk to our German friends...." "_Friends_, indeed?" said Ann. "They’re _no friends_ of _mine_!" In spite of her fierceness of denunciation, she made both Roger and Maud as comfortable as she could at her rather Spartan station, and became so happy, friendly and even tearful during the evening with Maud, talking over the little world of Reading and Basingstoke, Aldermaston and Englefield, that evening prayers for once were intermitted. Her husband sat mostly silent, listening respectfully. It was evident that he worked very hard at material things during the day, that he stood much in awe of his wife, and had completely lost his gift of extempore prayer. Their one daughter was a thin, sickly, wistful little girl of ten, very shy, and fonder of her father than of her mother. But according to Ann she was already a good needlewoman, and helped in the sewing classes. Kind Maud proposed she should be fetched one day and taken to Magara for a week’s stay. The air was so good there. Ann consented a little reluctantly. They rode their Basuto ponies to see if there were traces of Stolzenberg’s slaughter of the flamingoes. But the bodies had evidently been carried away from the lake to be skinned and because the bones were valuable; and the sole visible result of the raid was the absence of adult birds in pink plumage. There only remained of the former serried ranks a thin broken line of ugly immature flamingoes, dirty-white in plumage, streaked with brown. They were dibbling timidly in the thick waters of the lake; and this had also lost much of its former beauty—though Stolzenberg was not responsible for the slow desiccation of East Africa. The lake just now was no longer a uniform sheet of cobalt, bordered with a grey-white fringe of salt and guano mixed; it was reduced to two large areas of deep water with grey mud in between. How different from what Roger had seen in the glamour of 1888!